Black Man, Black Manta
by Jwminor
Summary: A superhero didn't stop me today. A cop did. I don't know why. How did he even see me? I am an invisible man. I am a Black man. I am Black Manta.


By Jordan Minor

Black Manta Created By Bob Haney and Nick Cardy

A superhero didn't stop me today. A cop did. I don't know why. How did he even see me? There's no chance in Hell I was speeding to where I was going. And why would anyone steal a car this humiliating? Getting seen in a busted-ass pool repair van is already a crime. Maybe the tail lights were broken and I forgot to check when I stole it. Who knows? Who cares? It's not like it matters now.

Anyway, I pull over. There's no one else on the highway, big flat stretch of sunny nothing, so I take my sweet time coming to a stop. Just blame it on the van. I let "Devil's Gun" by C.J. & Company finish its final funky notes. Cop knocks on my window. License and registration. Blah blah blah. We don't look at each other in the eyes at first, just hands. My hands are black, like rest of me, scarred as shit but very well-buttered. No speck of ash. His hands are white and, like, weirdly soft and smooth? I'm thinking is this dude for real? How are you a cop with pillowy palms like this? He might be firing guns but he's not throwing hands.

My curiosity piqued, I take a look at this kid and we both try to get a read on each other. He's got on mirrored sunglasses of course but my sunglasses are so thick and dark he's not seeing anything in my eyes. He's not seeing anything at all. Between the glasses and big bushy nappy beard and afro combo, looking at me is like staring in a void, as long as I don't flash a pearly white smile. It's hard though because the instant I lay my eyes on this clean-shaven, weak-chin, blonde peach fuzz, pale and pastey and pimply, little white mama's good boy face I want to start cackling. So I just laugh inside my own head, where I do all of my best work.

I win, and he knows it, so he chickens out and breaks the silence.

"Where are you headed this afternoon, sir?"

I tell him the truth. Bledsoe Bay, Baltimore suburb not too far from where I grew up. If Amnesty Bay up in Mass is coastal Metropolis, then Bledsoe Bay is Gotham City... only blacker… and wetter. Two topics I'm quite familiar with.

"Gotcha. And your name, sir?"

Milk-looking motherfucker did I not just give you my license? It says David Hyde because that's who the fuck I am. It's funny, if I told him my _fake_ name, that's what would get me into _real_ trouble. It's the opposite of hero's secret identity, and I am the opposite of a hero. I'll tell you who I am…

"Manta?"

I stare at the boy again, because he figured it out, and now I have to kill him. I take off my sunglasses, out of respect you see, and I reach back in my mind for a classic threat fitting a world-class supervillain such as myself. But then he says it again.

"Manta?"

I try to look at him to spit the venom, to tell him just how big a mistake he just made, trying to expose me. But I don't see the cop on the side on the road anymore. Now, I'm underwater, and I'm staring at _him_.

Aquaman.

"Black Manta!" he shrieks, practically slobbering into the surrounding seawater. Before I know it he's coming at me like a damn torpedo. I've always enjoyed fighting underwater, the physics of it are so graceful. It's like flying. Even now as Aquaman and I wrestle beneath the waves, legitimately trying to kill each other, I bet to anyone watching it looks like one of those fancy European circus shows. We're already wearing tights.

We trade blows and I get a few solid hits in. But I get greedy and start charging up a big old point blank optic blast. It takes too long though and my oblong metallic helmet, which I love to death, is a huge glowing red target. Aquaman knocks it clean off of my head. I look up and see it float away, cracked and firing its deadly twin beams at nothing in particular.

Now I can't breathe, and I know Arthur's smug ass knows this. His lady Mera creates a bubble of air surrounding us on the ocean floor. I collapse into a sputtering heap. Arthur, as always, steps out with the most perfectly styled blonde white man haircut you've ever seen on dude who's constantly drenched. His pearly skin glistens like his scaly orange outfit. Every time I see him it's like the first time, the time I realized Black folks wouldn't rule land or sea without a fight.

"I'm tired of this, Manta. Tired, of whatever this even is anymore."

I'm still coughing up brine, trying to hawk the most particularly nasty loogies at Aquaman's and Mera's dainty green feet. He's pretty pissed now and rakes his big boy fork clean across my bald Black head. All this new hair of mine hopefully makes the scars less… conspicuous. And like shaving myself slippery smooth ever made a difference swimming against Aquaman. Aerodynamics ain't worth a damn in Atlantis, I should really know that by now.

"Why are you even doing this? Revenge for your father? I've apologized. Money and treasures? You're a brilliant man, go be a professor or sell a patent. "

He has the nerve to pick me up off the ground, to stare at me with his flawless blue eyes.

"Manta, do you remember the time you told me that everything you do, all of your cold villainous schemes and evil acts of violence, were to protect and grow the freedom of your people? I respect that. I related to that. You said, and I'll never forget this, 'Have you never wondered why I'm called _Black_ Manta?' It was deep."

He drops me. This son of fish bitch drops me. Mera magically pulls my blood clean off of his hands and whips it into my face. Glad to know the contempt is mutual.

"But it was another lie, a useful con to lure in followers who actually believed in a cause worth fighting for. But we both know the truth. You don't believe in anything. You're just so… shallow. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. And I'm going to back to Atlantis to protect and grow the freedom of _my_ people. By King Atlan's Trident, do you even have any people to go back to, Black Manta?"

I try to look at him to spit the venom, to tell him just how big a mistake he just made. But before I so much as move Mera wraps me up in water with an air bubble inside and rockets me back towards the surface world. Before I black out I catch a glimpse of Aquaman chatting up a seahorse to ride back to his shining city with his beautiful bride. I don't think it's possible to look like more of a dick.

The next thing I know I've washed up on the beach. And because I study my prey I know exactly where I am: Tom Curry's lighthouse on Amnesty Bay. Aquaman put me in time out at the place he grew up. I grab my head in pain from what I thought was The Bends, from coming up on land too quickly. But really it's his voice in my skull still scolding me, ringing around inside a massive metal dome. It's a worse kind of pressure.

"Do you even have any people to go back to, Black Manta? Manta? Manta…"

I snap out of my little supervillain war flashback, back to the cop.

"A manta, that's what's on your knife handle there, right?"

Ha, so dig on this, all this time I thought the cop was trying to bust me, bust Black Manta, he's just admiring the tools of the trade I left all out in the open like a dumbass. It's a dope knife though and he's right to be jealous of it. So I open up a little and give him a gift, a gift other than not murdering him I mean.

I put on the most shuck and jive smile you've ever seen and say, "Yes, you're right office. It is a manta. That's funny you mention that actually. This knife here is very special to me. You wanna know why?"

Of course he does. White boys who become cops love learning about ropes and knots and knives and all that other Boy Scout bullshit.

So I continue, "My father gave me this knife, and his father gave it to him. He told me my grandfather was the greatest frogman in the history of the United States military. He drowned and stabbed so many Nazis they gave him the title of 'Manta.' But when the war ended he and the rest of his men were abandoned by their country. So they bought some boats and started a… different kind of business. They were disciplined men, ruthless men. I wasn't even that old when my dad gave me this knife. My grandfather had just died and we tossed his body overboard. He tells me, 'This isn't a world, a universe, where a free man can afford to be soft. You better hear me telling you this now because I will beat this lesson into your skull if I have to.' I understood why my family needed to be on the ocean, needed to bury ourselves in it. The ocean doesn't love or hate. It doesn't feel anything at all. And neither did we."

In retrospect, the only thing missing from that confession was, "I also fight Aquaman on the regular." But these cops ain't out here picking up subtext in nigga's life story.

"Well that's a cool story, bro," he says. "But I'm not so sure that knife is legal for interstate travel. Let me tell you what. Since it is a family heirloom I'll let it slide as long as you aren't carrying any other illegal weapons. Deal?"

I shake his hands and bring back the grin, "Deal."

I step out of the van, nice and slow, and walk around to the back. There's a nice breeze and I feel especially fine as my shirt (black, broad-collared and dangerously unbuttoned at the chest like something from the disco floor) ruffles ever so slightly. Those skintight suits get old after a while.

Together we open the rusty old back doors and the cop takes a look around. So What plot has your brilliant police work foiled in the back of this van? What do we have here? Some bottled water. A spare tire. Chlorine and hoses and oxygen tanks. Hangers with pants and more shirts. A tub of imitation crab meat. Oh a suitcase! What could be in there? A last-gen MacBook, a charger, and some audiobook cassette tapes. A different supervillain could've blown up the whole world in the time you've spent wasting our lives with this joke.

"Does it feel, I don't know, weirdly warm in here to you?"

He starts reaching around near the hangers, and if he sticks it where it doesn't belong, I'm gonna have to kill him again. But I… don't want to do that. Yeah, I don't want to do that. So I play it cool, even though I'm honestly sweating, and say, "Nah, but I'm probably just used to the bad AC. So we good? I'll try to get a permit for this knife once I make it to the Bay."

The cop pulls back. "Good enough for me!" He pulls out his phone and starts reading something. "Besides I've gotta get back to the Bay myself. Chief wants as many men as possible covering this 'political protest' or whatever." I don't think I've ever seen a grown man use air quotes that sarcastically. "It's just gang scum blaming everyone else for their problems if you ask me. Take some responsibility!" He's laughing now. "I hope one them takes just one step out line. We'll show him who's the boss. Anyway, you have a nice day, sir!"

I'm not sure what pisses me off more as I stand there frozen watching this white cop practically skip back to his car to go bust some Black teenagers' heads. Is it how being a cop can even let a dude this lame feel powerful? Is it how quickly and gleefully he dropped his "big boy professional" schtick. Or is it the fact he assumed that I, me specifically, wouldn't care. He didn't even need to know I was Black Manta, murderer and supervillain and fake revolutionary, to know I wouldn't have a problem with some casual oppression. It's obvious what's wrong with him. But what's so obviously wrong with me?

I hear it again, Aquaman's voice in my head, the whole reason I'm heading back home in the first place, "Do you even have any people to go back to, Black Manta?"

I don't have much time. The car is already pulled away. Fortunately, the door to the back of the van is still open. I pull out the "empty" hangar this fool luckily missed and press my fingers on what looks like thin air. In seconds, she materializes, my brand new experimental Black Manta armor.

I call it the "Optic White Suit," capable of becoming totally invisible and blending in with its environment. I needed something with a bit more utility on land than just a scuba suit with a few extra knives in it. The svelte new flying saucer of a helmet can cloak itself as well. I just need to figure out how to make the machinery run a little cooler.

As useful as its arsenal is though, there's no time to put on the full outfit. And right now I'm not worrying about subtlety anyway. So I grab the helmet and smile at my reflection in the big red eyes. I've been looking dumb as Hell wearing this thing for years and I still love it.

Sometimes I like to imagine I'm one of my victims, right as they realize they're one of my victims. You might call it disassociation but I really think it's empathetic. It brings us closer together, before they die a lonely death. So know this, officer. We you look in your rearview mirror and see me, Black Manta, chrome dome and ebony bod, you aren't by yourself. You aren't the only one watching as I shoot two massive beams of crimson light that blast you into oblivion. Your car explodes. All evidence of your life is vaporized. But you aren't alone. I'm there with you. I see you, too.

There are still miles of empty road ahead of me before I reach Bledsoe Bay. I realize the new helmet is actually small enough to fit me while I'm behind the wheel. So fuck yes Black Manta will be Black Manta behind the wheel of this van. The Optic White Suit isn't just about killing. It's about making life a little easier in general. Like me, it contains multitudes. So as I drive toward my home and my people, or at least those I can call mine in time, I decide to grab one of those audiobook cassettes and test out one more feature. I'm emotionless on the outside when I wear this mask, like my brother the sea. It's by design. So when I tell you I'm smiling, you know it's for real. And I'm grinning ear to ear as the words of not Aquaman but Mr. Ralph Ellison echo throughout the surprisingly excellent acoustics of my head. I am Black Manta.

"I am an invisible man."


End file.
